Donald Trump Jr., appealing to his father in the proxy battle of grown-up sons, said Hunter was a “crackhead” and complained to Sean Hannity that if he, Don Jr., had done what he accused Hunter Biden of doing – an obscure mischief network allegedly uncovered by Delaware computer technician Rudolph W. Giuliani and the New York Post – “I would call from Rikers Island.”
Obviously, there is a lot to unpack here.
But as a starting point, we can note that Joe Biden’s response to all of this was to love his son.
Freely, unconditionally. “I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son,” Biden retorted in the first debate, after the president brought up Hunter’s drug use – which both Bidens admitted and brought up. said that nothing he had done was wrong in Ukraine, “he said in the second.
In the miasma of a New York Post article on Hunter, the alleged text messages presented as part of the inflammatory package came out more like tender missives from a worried father. “Hello, my stepson,” Joe allegedly wrote to Hunter while he was checked in at a drug rehab center. “I miss you and I love you.” According to the alleged texts – the provenance and authenticity of which have not been verified by the Bidens or other news agencies – Hunter feared damaging his father’s campaign. “The only goal is recovery,” Biden reassured him.
Watching these two groups of fathers and sons – Donald and Donald Jr. in one corner, Joe and Hunter in another – is really watching two types of fatherhood play out like a parable: of love, of family. , of the homeland.
It’s not hard to imagine what the president thought he was doing when he first hit on Hunter’s drug use and staid military career: that Joe Biden would be embarrassed by his son. And maybe voters would think of them less as a family. Trump’s older brother, Fred, died of alcoholism in 1981. Friends of the family told the Washington Post last year that it was like “a dark family secret”, causing “shame” for the family. Trump family, for whom – as Fred Trump’s daughter Marie later said – “weakness was the greatest sin.”
In the Trump family in general, the love of a father depended on filial devotion, Mary L. Trump also said. How much a son has embraced the family business, how much he has lived up to the family name. In recent years, Don Jr. has attempted to become the biggest advocate and supporter of his father’s hype, in campaign and in life.
How strange it is for the president, then, to expose all of Hunter Biden’s embarrassing failures and see Joe Biden’s response: “I’m proud of him.”
Slate reporter Aymann Ismail has written a thoughtful essay on the Joe / Hunter relationship, and how uncomfortable it can be for some men to witness this kind of intense and intimate fatherly love. “The ideals of stoicism, toughness, and quiet, lonely strength are projected and executed by men,” he writes. “A portrayal of open and unashamed affection between a father and his adult son calls that into question.”
Last week John Cardillo, a conservative Newsmax host, tweeted a black and white photography of Joe and Hunter hugging, the elder Biden kissing the younger on the cheek. “Does that sound like an appropriate father / son interaction to you?” Cardillo asked.
The implication was something incestuous or untoward, so the overwhelming response couldn’t have been what Cardillo hoped. “I wish my dad was always there to give me a hug like that. So yeah, ”comedian Ben Stiller wrote, in what was a pretty representative answer. “My father died when I was 14. I would give a lot for a time like this, ”wrote author Mark Harris. (Many other people responded with not words but pictures – of Trump hugging and kissing his own grown children, of patting him on Ivanka’s butt. Do whatever you like.)
Joe Biden’s life as a father has been shaped by loss. His daughter Naomi died at a young age in the car crash which also killed his first wife. Her son Beau died of brain cancer at the age of 46. Handsome, the golden boy who would have been, in many ways, easy to love – who “had all the best of me, but with the designed bugs and flaws,” as Biden writes in his memoir.
After Beau’s death, Joe decided not to run for president. Hunter hid in his apartment and drank vodka. Then one day Hunter told the New Yorker his dad walked up to the door and said, “I need you. What do we have to do? “
Is the purpose of fatherhood to mold your offspring to your image – the path you deem most worthy and best – and to demand respect and dedication? Or is the point to love your son even in his lowest moments, to redefine your expectations, to shoulder the heavy burden of unconditional parenthood, even when it is an unbalanced affair?
It is no surprise to point out that these two philosophies reflect the relationship the two politicians have with the country. Trump, a man who loves America only if it’s nice to him and loves him according to his exacting specifications: “It’s a two-way street; they also have to treat us well, ”he said in March, suspending the promise of federal relief from the coronavirus on whether the governors of the blue states were suitably deferential.
Biden, a man who loves America even if it is sometimes self-destructive. Even though he’s dejected, embittered, spiritually adrift, mad with anxiety.
After the first debate, several voters cited Biden’s open defense against Hunter as a defining moment in the debate. It spoke to them as parents, who knew the pride and sorrow of seeing their children suffer and struggle with a challenge. I wonder if that spoke to them as kids too, caressing towards the end of 2020, yearning for a reassuring presence to say they were going to be successful – they had struggled, but they were all, every one of them, worthy of love.
Hunter Biden may not be the son America dreams of having. Joe Biden may be the father.
Monica Hesse is a columnist who writes about gender and its impact on society. For more information, visit wapo.st/hesse.